So, a customer service interface was compromised via stolen credentials and used to access various Linode instances. A couple questions that immediately come to mind: 1. Can this interface be accessed from anywhere on the Internet? If so, why? If not, does that mean other systems owned by Linode were compromised as well? 2. Why can customer service representatives access and update servers without the client being no…
Reading the ticket slush posted it shows no password change logs, if linode was compromised either the whole infrastructure was compromised (unlikely) or a rouge admin or a admin comprimised account accessed the vps and stole the $, as per the bitcoin forums. Total stolen is roughly $16,000 USD
That's funny. I know from experience in the script kiddie part of the Internet that it was sometimes exceptionally easier to hack entire datacenters (even ones worth millions of dollars) just to get into a few of their customers, especially if those customers secured themselves.
Hosting companies have very sophisticated websites sometimes, meaning that they're almost always vulnerable to something.
I know of an SQL injection in an very large U.S. datacenter's administration panel which has been there for at least six years. Six years and it has not been fixed, and maybe a dozen people have independently discovered it. The deeper you delve, the more you realize that at least a handful of people also have access to important upstreams/backbones.
It's a lot bigger of a mess than anybody realizes. A bit of advice: if you say you're secure, you're either lying or colocating.